Archive for category: Food & Hunger

Information and stories on food.

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How One Woman and Her Phone App Fed the Hungry

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According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, ranking behind paper, food is the second largest source of waste.

Twenty-five-year-old Komal Ahmad, who graduated from the University of California at Berkley in 2012, is solving this problem by feeding millions of people with her phone app, Feeding Forward.

In 2011, Ahmad was approached by a homeless man who asked her for money. Instead of cash, Ahmad offered to take him to lunch. As they ate, she discovered he was a returned soldier who, after some bad luck, now made his living begging on the streets.

Ahmad was overwhelmed by his situation. Determined to help others like him, she started a program at UC Berkley where cafeterias donated excess food to homeless shelters. Soon after, the program expanded to 140 colleges across the United States.

But Ahmad didn’t stop with the food recovery program.

“Imagine a football stadium filled to its brim,” Ahmad says. “That’s how much food goes wasted every single day in America.”

In 2012, Ahmad collaborated with a developer and they launched the Feeding Forward mobile app in 2013. The app originally targeted restaurant owners and event planners in San Francisco who could use the app to donate leftover food to homeless shelters. By entering their location into the app, a Feeding Forward driver picks up the leftover food and delivers it to shelters in the area.

In addition to the app, Feeding Forward has its own website.

Since Feeding Forward launched, Ahmad has recovered more than 691,896 pounds of food, which fed more than 570,000 people.

Now the CEO of her nonprofit organization, Feeding Forward, Ahmad says, “We need to figure out how to establish sustainable solutions that can distribute the food we already have faster and get it to people who need it faster and safely.”

Ahmad’s mobile app is proof that quick and successful distribution can feed the hungry.

In early June 2015, Feeding Forward partnered with the Bite Silicon Food Valley food-tech conference in Santa Clara, California. Over the course of three days, celebrity chefs prepared a wide range of meals. After the event, Feeding Forward collected 5,135 pounds of food which fed more than 4,279 people in eight different homeless shelters.

Around the world, the Feeding Forward app is praised and desired.

“I didn’t expect it to blow up,” Ahmad says. “People as far as Nairobi, Bangalore and Hong Kong have wrote us asking us to expand Feeding Forward to their cities and countries. They’re like, ‘Tell me what I can do to get it here.’”

The mobile app is currently being revamped. It will be available again in August 2015. The website, however, is still up and running.

Feeding Forward offers hope for other countries struggling with hunger and food distribution.

Ahmad says, “These are huge cities that have absurd amounts of food thrown away every day. We are trying to make the Bay Area a case study to say ‘Hey, if it works here, it can work anywhere.’”

– Kelsey Parrotte

Sources: CNET, Daily News, Feeding Forward, News Everyday
Photo: Architect Africa

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Micronutrient-Hungry Children

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Hunger and malnutrition often result from a person not eating enough calories. But there are some children who may eat enough calories per day, yet not receive adequate nutrients and are still, therefore, malnourished. These are children who are micronutrient-hungry, or have “hidden hunger.” Their bodies are deteriorating, stunted and/or underperforming because their food in not nutritious enough.

Hidden hunger can affect anyone, but growing children and pregnant mothers are at the most risk since the developing children desperately need micronutrients to grow into healthy adults.

Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals that are present in a healthy diet. There are many micronutrients that are needed for optimal living, but UNICEF considers four to be the most vital: iron, Vitamin A, iodine and folate.

Vitamin A helps a person’s vision and keeps a body strong enough to combat diseases that can often take a child’s life such as measles, diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia.

Iodine helps the thyroid function properly. A healthy thyroid “regulates growth and metabolism.” Iodine deficiency is also a leading cause of preventable mental disabilities that often start in utero if the mother does not get enough iodine.

Iron and folate are both vital in the formation of red blood cells.

Often children are at risk to become malnourished after disasters or wars occur since access to food is one of the major issues for those in refugee camps.

But even in areas that are more stable, if poverty is rampant, then access to proper food is still compromised.

People who live in countries that are considered middle class have micronutrient-hungry children because the cheapest, most filling food is often processed or carbohydrate/energy dense food that have the least amount of the necessary micronutrients.

Much good is being done to ensure that the poverty cycle that is perpetuated by poor nutrition is stopped.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has a plan in place to help specifically with vitamin A deficiency. They are taking a multifaceted approach: “The arsenal of nutritional ‘well-being weapons’ includes a combination of breastfeeding and vitamin A supplementation, coupled with enduring solutions, such as promotion of vitamin A-rich diets and food fortification.”

Part of their plan includes helping those in poverty by “planting seeds,” both in the sense of promoting breastfeeding and of planting a physical garden. Helping rural families plant a garden with fruits and vegetables that are naturally micronutrient dense is a great way to help reduce vitamin A deficiency.

UNICEF is working on the problem of iodine deficiency in the Dominican Republic. Most Americans consume iodized salt on a regular basis, but that commodity is not a part of every culture. Since iodized salt is an easy solution to the devastating issue of iodine deficiency, UNICEF has created an educational initiative in the Dominican Republic to raise public awareness about iodized salt consumption.

The Micronutrient Initiative (MI) in a nonprofit organization based out of Ottawa, Canada and works with the Canadian government, private businesses, global partnerships and individuals to end micronutrient hunger. They are a large scale operation that has an impact around the globe providing education and direct resources to those who are suffering from hidden hunger.

Malnutrition is multifaceted. It cannot be solved through feeding hungry people cheap, calorie dense yet micronutrient-deficient food.  Thankfully, many great organizations also stand on this principle and the issue of micronutrient-hungry children is making great strides.

– Megan Ivy

Sources: Micronutrient Initiative , UNICEF 1, UNICEF 2, World Health Organization 1, World Health Organization 2
Photo: Zomppa

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Cleaner Cookstove Technology Fails to Take Off

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The Poverty Action Lab (PAL), a research organization from MIT, carried out a project that implemented new, environmentally friendly cookstoves for 2,600 households in Orissa, India. Each household contributed a small amount of money to pay for the building of the stove and was given training on its proper use and maintenance. Although the initial take up of the technology was high, families were only cooking 1.8 meals a week on the new stove three years after its implementation. Most had reverted to using their old cookstoves, commonly called chulas.

Indoor air pollution caused by chulas is the second largest health risk in developing countries, after unclean water. Over 70% of all households in India use them. Chulas burn cheap fuels such as firewood, coal or cow manure and create particle matter concentrations of 20,000 micrograms per cubic meter; the recommended limit is just 50. For the people who are around them — mainly women and young children — it is like smoking several packs of cigarettes a day. They cause 2 million deaths in India annually.

The new cookstoves were promoted as a cleaner alternative to traditional stoves that would save families from mental hardship and health expenditures. They would also make them more productive, as adults and children would miss fewer days of work and school. Finally, the stoves were advertised as being more cost-effective as they used less fuel and more time-effective because they decreased cooking times.

Medical checkups three years into the PAL study showed that because they were rarely used, introducing these stoves to poor households even at a very low cost did nothing to change health effects. High levels of blood pressure, a tendency to develop coughs and poor infant health remained the same. People showed the same risks of developing lung cancer, cardiovascular diseases and respiratory diseases.

In addition to causing health problems, chulas cause environmental damage. Worldwide, three billion people use them, or four out of every ten people. They collectively release 6 billion kilograms of CO2 into the atmosphere. That is triple the amount of the daily emissions from all private cars in the United States.

The main issue that seems to have stopped people from using their new stoves was that they required a lot more maintenance, and their unfamiliarity with the technology was an impediment to carrying out repairs. Households reported that they spent hours getting their stoves fixed and cleaning newly added chimneys. Their old way of cooking was easy to use and never broke. Moreover, it was familiar, so people were more inclined to revert back to it when their new stoves exhibited problems.

While the new cookstoves perform well in laboratories and have the potential to drastically decrease health and environmental effects, their effectiveness depends on them actually being used. India launched a National Biomass Cookstove Initiative (NCBI) in 2010 and plans to install 2.5 million cookstoves by 2017. Moreover, Hillary Clinton helped start the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC), which aims to install 100 million cookstoves by 2020. Both the NCBI and GACC would do well to conduct long-term studies before spending millions of dollars in initiatives that have little to no impact.

– Radhika Singh

Sources: National Geographic, The Washington Post, Poverty Action Lab 1, Poverty Action Lab 2, Boston Globe, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves
Photo: The Washington Post

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Ten Poverty Statistics You Should Know

Ten Poverty Statistics You Should KnowThe following are ten poverty statistics that any advocate should know and be able to share with others. They describe the global poverty situation:

1. Globally, there are over 1 billion children living in poverty.

2. 1/4 of all humans live without electricity — approximately 1.6 billion people.

3. The World Food Programme says, “The poor are hungry and their hunger traps them in poverty.” Hunger is the number one cause of death in the world, killing more than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.

4. Gender discrimination is widely recognized as a major contributor to children living in poverty and creating disparities in how resources are earned, valued and distributed based on power relationships between men and women. These poverty-induced relationships lead to tens of millions of children becoming victims of exploitation, violence and abuse.

5. Global poverty leads to global hunger, as people living in poverty cannot afford nutritious food for themselves and their families. This creates a vicious cycle where a lack of food makes people weaker and less able to earn money, preventing them from escaping poverty and hunger.

6. Poverty is closely linked to the inability to access clean water and proper sanitation. More than 750 million people lack adequate access to clean drinking water.

7. The disadvantages of poverty are closely linked to an increased risk of disease. For example, diarrhea, which is caused by inadequate drinking water, sanitation and hand hygiene, kills an estimated 842,000 people every year globally, or approximately 2,300 people per day. With the increased risk of disease, those under the poverty line have little access to basic medical attention, causing preventable diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia to take the lives of 2-3 million people a year.

8. 80 percent of the world’s population lives on less than $10 a day, well below the standard of the Quality of Life Index.

9. A quarter of all people live without electricity — approximately 1.6 billion people.

10. The cost of eradicating world poverty is estimated at 1 percent of global income, whereas other financial endeavors such as military spending in the U.S. alone can reach over $691.22 billion.

– Alysha Biemolt

Sources: 11 Facts About Global Poverty, Global Issues, UNICEF, United Nations World Food Programme
Photo: Flickr

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1 in 5 Children in France Living in Poverty

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A new report by UNICEF France has revealed that over three million children in France live in poverty. In a span of four years, the number of children living under the poverty line increased by 440,000. Also touched on, was the high level of discrimination and human rights violation of poor migrant children. The report also addressed France’s failure to implement a strategy for children, and suggested 36 policy adjustments.

We often think of France as a sturdy, developed world power, but the widening gap between the rich and the poor, lack of policies aimed at children and widespread discrimination against migrants, show that developing countries aren’t the only places for progress to be made. In fact, many European countries face higher rates of child poverty and an estimated 1 in 3 children lives in poverty in both the United Kingdom and Spain.

These findings seem astonishing, especially for a country with the financial status and power as France, but it goes to show how important policies are. Without the proper policies in place, countries will not make progress. This new report and the investigation as a whole will provide a prime example for governments all over the world. Policy is what gives a country the power to grow. For example, we have seen poverty reduction programs go into developing countries with the good intentions of providing or creating capital only to see it stop there because of a lack of regulation or policies in place to continue growth, and to protect that growth.

The lack of policy aimed at French youth is alarming from any standpoint. The high rate of poverty among children suggests a lack of investment in youth, which will hurt France in the long term. With 3 million impoverished children, the outlook on the future working generation is not good. The rates of homelessness and school dropouts should be a serious wake up call for the French government. As more and more children fall below the poverty line, fewer children are enrolled in school, which translates directly to less economic and political participation in the future. The decreased participation will make for a less productive nation and France, as a whole will face a number of resulting problems needing urgent attention.

France has a reputation for discrimination against migrants and foreigners and this report as a part of a broader investigation and the changes the French government makes as a result should hopefully loosen some of those longstanding divisions. In order to succeed and grow as a nation, France desperately needs to become more progressive. There needs to be less marginalization and more positive policy aimed at children and at migrants to encourage them to succeed, which will in turn help France as a whole to grow.

– Emma Dowd

Sources: Eurostat, France 24, Newsweek, World Bulletin
Photo: FarsNews

 

Wasting Food in America

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Each year, industrialized countries like the U.S. waste just about as much food as the total net amount of food that is produced in sub-Saharan Africa. That is 222 million tons wasted in comparison to 230 million produced.

In 2009, the amount of food wasted was equal to more than 50 percent of cereal crops produced globally, which is 2.3 billion tons of food.

The United States Department of Agriculture began its U.S. Food Waste Challenge in June of 2013. Along with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, their goal was to acquire 1,000 supporters by 2020.

Some of the goals are to minimize food wasted in school meal programs, find ways to reuse food that is rejected from the market due to “un-sellability”, estimate the amount of food waste in the U.S. each year, and discover new technologies that decrease that amount.

The initiative is much needed, considering that the average American consumer throws away ten times the quantity of food that someone in Southeast Asia does. That number has grown by 50 percent since the 1970s.

On average, American wastes about 40 percent of all food. Waste takes place on farms, in grocery stores, in homes, and in landfills. That is equivalent to 20 pounds per person, $165 billion, and one fourth of all freshwater per year.

Studies show that if America reduced food waste by just 15 percent, the amount of food saved could feed more than 25 million people per year.

Fresh water is a precious resource all over the world, and 80 percent of it is used to produce food in the U.S. Food production also uses half of the country’s land and ten percent of the nation’s total energy budget.

Food that decays in landfills now makes up nearly 25 percent of total U.S. methane emissions.

Yolanda Soto is looking to dramatically reduce the amount of food wasted in America by saving 35-40 million pounds of produce every year. She does this by collecting food rejected at the U.S.- Mexican border and shipping it to needy families in the U.S. and Mexico.

More than 50 percent of food grown in Mexico and imported to the U.S. is inspected and rejected at the border near Nogales, Arizona. Each trailer carries about $70,000 worth of food.

Soto started Borderlands Food Bank in the 1990s after being shocked at how much edible produce is tossed despite the high percentage of people plagued by hunger.

The organization’s focus is “to provide fresh, nutritious produce to people in need, advocate for the hungry, and help eradicate malnutrition and hunger.”

Beginning with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, imported fruits and vegetables undergo inspection by around 40 different government agencies. Produce is taken out of commerce if it does not meet the USDA’s standards for quality and size.

“It’s perfectly good,” says Soto about the produce she redistributes, “but because it had some scarring, they couldn’t sell it. Who’s going to buy it?”

The truth is, American’s have this idea that in order to taste good, food has to look perfect. Anything less than perfect is rejected.

– Lillian Sickler

 

Sources: NPR, The Huffington Post Border Lands Food Bank National Resources Defense Council World Food Day U.S. Environmental Protection Agency USDA
Photo: Takepart

FAO Partners with Wholesale Markets

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On May 28 of this year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization signed an agreement with the World Union of Wholesale Markets designed to reduce food waste and improve food security for the world’s urban poor.

According to the FAO, about one third of food produced for human consumption each year is lost or wasted. It estimates that over 40% of root crops, fruits and vegetables are lost or wasted, along with 35% of fish, 30% of cereals and 20% of meat and dairy products. This figure tallies up to an estimated 1.3 billion tons of food with an economic value of $1 trillion. These losses are quickly becoming concentrated in cities, where over half of the world’s population lives. Moreover, this figure will increase by 2050, as two-thirds of the people on earth are expected to live in cities.

Getting food to the urban poor is a novel challenge. Many low-income families live in “food deserts,” areas where there is no easy access to food, much less fresh food.

Eugenia Serova, head of the FAO’s Agro-Industry Division, said in a press release, “more efficient wholesale markets, and overall urban market outlets, can result in more affordable means to reach the city poor with healthy food.”

According to Ms. Serova, this new agreement is as much about learning how to deal with the future as it is about handling the challenges of the present: “If close to 90 percent of the expected increase in the global urban population in the next two decades will take place in cities in Africa and Asia, it makes much sense to build solid knowledge on how to strengthen urban market systems.”

WUWM has agreed to work with the FAO to tackle these challenges with an eye toward sustainability and inclusiveness.

Donald Darnall, a member of the board of directors of WUWM, said, “Some 60 percent of wholesale markets we’ve surveyed said managing food waste was their number-one challenge for the next five years . . . Our markets are embracing ‘good practices’ to reduce waste and we see this as an opportunity to develop improved waste management strategies and share solutions.”

The two agencies hope to develop a set of better practices for wholesale markets in urban settings. The goal is a more efficient flow of information and a dramatic reduction in food waste and loss. The partnership also hopes to improve producers’ access to markets, make food handling safer and more consistent and eliminate urban food deserts.

WUWM is connected to wholesale marketers in 43 countries, giving it access to an enormous amount of data. With this much data and expertise at their disposal, the FAO and WUWM are well on their way to finding new methods of improving efficiency, ensuring better quality of produce and ultimately cutting waste.

– Marina Middleton

Sources: UN News Centre, World Union of Wholesale Markets Seattle Pi Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN
Photo: Flickr

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Malnutrition in Malaysia

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Malnutrition in Malaysia is two-fold: there are many children who are underweight and suffer from malnutrition, while a good percentage of the population is obese.

Malaysia has seen significant economic progress and continues to develop substantially. According to the World Bank Group, the country’s economic growth is estimated to progress by seven percent every 25 years, and has virtually succeeded in eliminating poverty in the region. The amount of households living beneath poverty lines decreased from 50 percent to less than 1.0 percent since the 1960s. Currently, the country is under a program called the New Economic Model, launched years prior, which aims to achieve the goal of high income status by 2020. The program also ensures that the progress made during this period is sustainable.

Although Malaysia is experiencing a great deal of prosperity, there still seems to be a prevailing concern regarding malnutrition in the country. There still remain pockets of places and people living below poverty lines with high income inequalities. These pockets contribute to the malnutrition issue in Malaysia.

There are currently 30 million people living in Malaysia, and of those 30 million, 9.5 million are children. Among the population, 17. 2 percent or approximately 400,000 children are stunted, while 12.5 percent are underweight. On the other hand, 44 percent of the population is overweight, while an estimated 15 percent is considered obese, according to the National Heath ad Morbidity Survey. The total number of people with obesity exceeds that of any other country in Southeast Asia. These two issues are causing a significant divide in the realm of malnutrition within the country.

In regards to undernourishment in Malaysia, there has been a slight decrease in mortality rates among children under five years of age. According to National Health Statistics, the mortality rate dropped in 2010 from 8.4 per 1,000 people to 8.1 in 2013. Rural areas in Malaysia continue to have a high rate of malnourished children, especially in indigenous regions. More specifically, malnutrition in Orang Asli is among the more prevalent areas, according to a recent status report by the Children’s Rights Coalition in Malaysia.

In indigenous regions, lack of access to clean water, land and food contribute to malnutrition. Additionally, communicable diseases passed on as a result of poor sanitation also cause underweight and malnourished children.

The problem of malnutrition in Malaysia has been previously addressed in a failed attempt to rehabilitate malnourished children. The project did not reach its target in the allotted time because of corruption by officials. The program was essentially launched to provide baskets filled with vitamins and essential food items to households living under the poverty line.

Malnutrition in Asia, especially in Malaysia, is among one of the biggest problems the region is facing. Despite Malaysia’s economic prosperity and affluent resources, there is still a high percentage of malnourished households suffering from food insecurity. The high obesity rate along with the amount of malnourished people living in Malaysia sheds light on the inequalities that exist within the country, inequalities that reflect the great divide between the rich and poor.

– Nada Sewidan

Sources: WHO, UNICEF, The World Bank 1, The World Bank 2
Photo: Southeast Asia Globe

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Creating Sustainable Food

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The world is estimated to have a population of over nine billion people by the year 2050. Such a large number of people would require plenty of essential resources in order to stay alive. Food is one of those essential resources. The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 70 percent more food than is produced now will be needed to cater to this new population size.

Overpopulation is a legitimate threat to the well-being of the inhabitants of Earth. Our natural resources are being depleted more quickly; yet at the same time, we require more of those natural resources. We are playing all of our cards and not getting enough back to play again. At any level of overpopulation, people will always need food for sustenance. That is why research in sustainable foods is becoming more popular.

Impossible Foods is an organization set out to create and provide food that tastes great, is good for you and most importantly, does not have a negative impact on the environment or one’s health. Impossible Foods was started by a Stanford University scientist and has since grown in size to 50 scientists. These scientists look at animal products at a molecular level, and then select specific proteins and nutrients from greens, seeds and grains to recreate meat.

Impossible Foods is severing the connection between animals and meat. We have relied on animals to make our food for us in an unsustainable way. Impossible Foods found a better, more humane way of going about creating meat in particular. On its website for example, one can find a picture of an appetizing cheeseburger, crafted only out of plants. That’s right, both the cheese and the burger were made completely out of plants.

Progression in this field of technology can lead to solutions to the foreseeable overpopulation problem. Our current ways of providing food to the masses is becoming inefficient and is under performing. Companies like Impossible Foods are coming up with ways to increase our food production while maintaining the integrity of the land.

– Erik Nelson

Sources: Impossible Foods 1, Impossible Foods 2, CNBC, Sustainable Solutions Development Network
Photo: Kickstarter

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The Cost to End World Hunger

World hunger and its devastating effects can be eradicated with a fraction of the United States Federal Budget. Discussed below is a breakdown of leading facts and figures about the current state of world hunger, including the cost to end world hunger.

Cost to End World Hunger

The cost to end world hunger…

— $30 billion per year is needed to end world hunger
— $737 billion per year is the amount Congress spends on Defense

cost to end world hunger

How much does it cost to end world hunger?

– Leen Abdallah

World hunger can be eradicated.

A price has been set and estimated by the United Nations to solve this crisis – $30 billion a year. It may seem like a large sum of money, but when compared to the U.S. defense budget – $737 billion in 2012 – $30 billion seems more attainable. The $30 billion expense is manageable, especially when the U.S. would be joined by other investors in global poverty, but the U.S. has the capacity to be the leader on this issue.

An article published in the Los Angeles Times in 2008 states that providing a substantial amount of money directed specifically towards agricultural development could result in high-yields and trigger a second Green Revolution.

Helping the world’s poor is not merely the right and moral thing to do; it also benefits the private sector. Businesses have already thought of a solution: public-private partnerships. The business community works with the U.S. government to sustain agricultural development in poor countries so as to better tackle the problems that businesses face abroad in these underdeveloped and developing nations. These provided funds would not only increase food production but they would ensure that food prices are much more affordable.

Aside from benefits to the private sector and the economy, tackling the global hunger crises presents a better image for the U.S. as a “humanitarian superpower.” Furthermore, the U.S.’ involvement in humanitarian projects would present more American corporations as “respectful partners” within the global community.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has allied with corporate sponsors to support global development. For example, USAID works “with the Schaffer Global Group on a factory in Mali, with Heinz to help Egyptian tomato farmers and with Coca-Cola on clean water projects in a dozen countries.”

Much has been and continues to be done; yet, the U.S. possesses the capacity to do more. There are 870 million people who are under-nourished and the U.S. has the potential to end their hunger.

Source: LA Times, Know Your World:Hunger Facts, USGovSpending